Singing in the Basement

I have a dear friend, Julie, who is trying to keep three little babies safely gestating in her belly for 11 or 12 more weeks. She's had quite a few scares with them over the past couple of weeks, and after driving across state lines in a tricked-out minivan to get life-saving surgery for two of them, she's now on complete bedrest until they come. Which means, of course, that she'll need good reading material between now and April. So, my beloved Julie, I'm going to try to provide you with frequent entertainment from the Sloan corner of the world. I wish I were close enough to rub your feet and clean your bathroom and play the piano for you, but since I'm not, I'll give you a peek into the craziness of three children that will soon be your life. Of course, I came by my three children over the course of 4 years, not all at one time. So this is like getting tutoring for the AP Calculus exam from a remedial math student (which, coincidentally, is also what I am these days).

So your story for today, my dearest Julie, is right up your alley because it's all about singing (Julie, for those who don't know her, has a divine voice). By the time Dave came home yesterday evening, I'd worked myself into being grumpy. The reason? Because I'm spoiled rotten. When we lived in Morgantown and Dave was a simple post-doc, he was usually home by about 5:25 pm, because he worked a mile away and could walk fast. (Dave would interject here and remind me that he was either home at 5:25 pm or at, like, 3 am if he were doing an experiment and had to stay late. Whatever, Dave. Just go along with the story). Well, now that we're in Baltimore and he's a big-time grunt in a consulting company, he's usually home around 5:45, and this week, it was after 6 every night. This is where the spoiled rotten part comes in--I have several sisters and a truckload of friends who would salivate at the prospect of having their husbands home that early. But not me. I have commute envy. I know that Dave leaves the office shortly after 5, so between 5 and whenever he comes home, while the kids are getting grumpier and clingier and hungrier and louder, I'm dwelling darkly on how Dave is just relaxing in the car. He's probably listening to an audio book or singing along with a CD. He has not a care in the world, now that he's clocked out of work. He's planning which old episode of Lost he'll watch tonight, or what project he'll work on after the kids go to bed, which will be about 20 minutes after he comes home. As for me, I lament to myself, my work day starts at 6 am when Joshey wakes up and doesn't end until the last girl stops coming down for one last drink of water. And then the swing shift starts for Joshey's midnight and 3 am snack. Dave doesn't even know how hard I work, I think while slamming dinner dishes on the table. He gets to go to the bathroom without a child climbing onto his lap. H eats lunch sitting down. He can check his e-mail without getting interrupted every three minutes. Anyway, you get the idea. These are the complaints of someone who is spoiled rotten. There's probably a single mom or two out there that would have something to say about my work load. Nevertheless, these were my thoughts as 6 pm came and went and Dave still wasn't home. He came home not long after that, and I managed to be civil during dinner. Except there wasn't really dinner for me, because Joshey started throwing food and throwing fits after I'd had about three bites. So I got up, put Joshey in the bathtub, and then, because martyrs don't sit back down to eat after they've been interrupted at dinner, I went downstairs to hang up a load of laundry. I actually highly recommend hanging laundry if you're in a bad mood. You can feel sorry for yourself because you're doing something that servants used to have to do three hundred years ago. But there's also some physical outlet in snapping the clothes sharply to get the wrinkles out before hanging them up and in all of the bending down and standing up. So for whatever reason, I started to feel better almost immediately. And once the first edge of self-pity wore off, I started to sing. "Goodnight, My Someone," from the Music Man, then "Lida Rose." By this time, Dave and the girls had finished dinner, and Dave was finishing bathing Joshey. The bathroom is right above the laundry room, and down through the heating ducts and water pipes, I heard Dave join in with me. He would take the harmony line; I would have to listen to keep the right timing with him. We finished our Music Man repertoire and moved on to "Oh, how lovely is the evening." Then, as I finished hanging the last shirt, Dave was there at the door with a clean-smelling, cheerful, freshly-diapered baby. And my bad mood was over.